10 day periods

[ICriedAllTheWayToTheChipShop]

Just that! Over the last few months my periods have been dragging on for more than a week at a time. TMI warning, but I feel it's relevant. The usual pattern is a day or two of darkish red/brown spotting, followed by three days of quite heavy bright red blood, then five or more days of more brown spotting, accompanied by large clots. My cycle has got a bit longer, maybe 30 days, sometimes more, but it's still more or less a month.

For background, I'm 46, healthy BMI, never been pregnant. My periods always came every 28 days like clockwork until recently and lasted for about 6 days.

Is this just normal perimenopause stuff, or should I go to the GP? I'm not sure they'll be very interested at my age and I don't want to waste anyone's time.

Mine have always been like this, lasting about 14 days. I take the pill back to back and not had any periods for years now.

Yes deffo see Gp

Did nobody do any investigations at the time, try to find out if there were any underlying problems? I don't think I would be put on the pill now at my age, but I'd be pretty concerned if they tried tbh.

Similar happened to me. I thought it was peri-menopause but it turned out to be quite a big fibroid (found on ultrasound). I was since advised to have a hysterectomy - no more bleeding! So I would suggest you get it checked out.

No, I just thought it was normal at the time, extremely heavy bleeding and pain.

You can try tranexamic acid, which is great for reducing heavy bleeding. I'd ask your GP to try it and also maybe a transvaginal ultrasound just to check there's nothing else going on, fibroids etc. The pill can also help, but I'd try tranexamic acid first before that. A mirena coil is also a great option, it was made mainly for heavy bleeding etc (whilst also being contraception) but many get it to help with bleeding - it reduces the thickness if the uterus lining, so less bleeding and less cramps.